LEVELS PART IV (Levels of Victory)

This is the final lesson of Levels. The first week’s declaration was about Levels of Maturity. We dealt with how you need to realize where you are and it’s important to be challenged where you are. Each level is designed so you can get better and be ready to move to a deeper level. Week two was about Levels of Love. We talked about the many types of love and their significances. Week three we dealt with Levels of Life.
This declaration I feel led to kind of bring them all together discussing the LEVELS OF VICTORY. Before we talk about the levels of victory, let’s look at the word victory. 

Victory: the fact of winning a competition or battle, or an occasion when someone wins. Here is another definition… The definition says defeat of an enemy or an opponent. It is success in a struggle against difficulties or an obstacle.

Just the definition alone says that there can be no victory without a struggle. There can be no triumph without a challenge. You won’t reach a destination without a journey. What makes a person who wins an award for their work done get so emotional? Not the award and certainly not the person presenting the award. It’s all about the journey. You begin to think about the journey and what you went through to get to the actual win of the award. You think about all the sacrifices you made to get there.

Alan Rickman decided after earning an art degree and owning his own business that he would drop it all and sign up for acting classes in his 20’s. He eventually completely left his business and concentrated on acting full time. This sounds like a recipe for financial failure. By age 30, he was studying acting and his job was to dress other actors and still hadn’t landed an acting gig. It wasn’t until he was 42 that he was cast as a lead in a play called Dangerous Liaisons. All those involved became famous, except Alan. When a producer named Joel Silver saw his performance in the play, he asked him to play a villain in an unknown action movie with an actor that was a little bit famous because of his TV acting by the name of Bruce Willis that was about a few terrorists taking over a skyscraper. Finally at age 46, he began his acting career and eventually became a success. It wasn’t the landing of the job, it was the journey.

Peter Roget spent the main part of his life broke and by the time he was 61, he was a miserable, but accomplished lecturer, doctor and inventor. Suffering from mental breakdowns, his mother, sister and his own daughter became mentally unstable. Eventually, death visited his father, his uncle committed suicide in front of him and his wife died as well. He was a disturbed man who had OCD and the only thing that kept him together was making lists. When he retired from medicine at 61, he decided to spend his life doing his childhood hobby, making lists. Finally, at age 73, Peter Roget published his lists in a book that was titled Roget’s Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases that became known as “The Thesaurus.”

What is similar about these two stories? Well, both of them got to a place in their lives where they “hit rock bottom.” Eventually, they made their way to the top of their game as long as they didn’t quit their passion for what they wanted to accomplish.

Allow me to share one more story with you. In the book of Jonah, when Jonah got the order to go and do what God had called him to do and that is to speak the word of repentance to the people in a city called Nineveh, he got scared and went the opposite direction. He went and bought a ticket on a ship that was going away from Nineveh. The problem was there was a storm that was threatening the safety of the ship. The crew knew that there was someone responsible and after some flipping of coins, they figured that Jonah was responsible. Jonah says to them, “Throw me over.” They tried just getting to shore but the waves from the storm still got higher. Because the crew feared God, they eventually threw Jonah over. Jonah only survived because he was swallowed by a big fish. While in the belly of the fish he cried out to God in repentance saying, “But I’m worshipping you, God, calling out in thanksgiving. And I’ll do what I promised I’d do. Salvation belongs to God.” It was until three days in the fish that God commanded it and it threw him up on land. Jonah went straight to Nineveh and did what God called him to do. The awesome thing about this journey is that the Ninevites heard his message and accepted it. He was a success. He won over those people because their hearts were ready.

How many of us right now are in deep water and feeling like we are hitting rock bottom? If you do, this is not the time to give up. This is the time to check out your journey. Are you doing what God called you to do? Are you operating in your right place?

Here are a couple things I find about all three of these stories. They all knew what they were called to do. They all ended up in deep water. They each had to mature or be challenged where they were. They were in different levels of the deep, but they were each (Alan Rickman, Peter Roget and Jonah) all in some type of struggle or deep levels of their lives. The only difference is, Jonah ran. But he eventually came to his senses.

Are you going through a waiting period like Alan Rickman did? Are you losing left and right and getting discouraged? Are you running from something that God called you to and now you are knee deep in the belly of frustration? Are you drowning in the sea of bitterness? Are you overwhelmed with debt?

This is the day that we not only “declare” the victory, but we need to be ready to experience the journey. I am learning that every part of my journey is necessary for my destination. I am not just wading in the pool of levels. The only way to learn to swim in the pool, I have to keep moving. It may seem that the water is so deep that there is no way to find my way. I declare that today I will finish my course and I will make it. I declare that this is the day that I will minimize my complaining and accept what God allows. Be it a storm, be it deep water, be it waiting for my success or be it surviving while I seem to be losing. I will get there if I keep moving.